A Few Thoughts on Transmedia and Publishing

Something I’ve found fascinating these last few years is the rise of transmedia storytelling online, and its implications for publishers (especially those of YA stories). J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore is the obvious case in transmedia as an immersive, encyclopaedic story experience, enabling readers to create roles for themselves within the Hogwarts universe.

Not long ago, though, I stumbled across The Lizzie Bennet Diaries video channel. The videos (a hundred in total, each averaging five minutes) are part of a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice across social media (YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr), performed for the web by a team of actors and writers in the United States. The series with integrated transmedia (characters tweeted to one another between uploads) resulted in a book deal for its creators; a YA novelisation of the series by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick was published this week by Simon and Schuster, and I find this a pretty wonderful and staggering feat. Their story reimagines Elizabeth Bennet as a California video blogger pursuing a Master’s degree in Mass Communications, ignoring pressure from her mother to forgo her education and find either a suitable job or a rich, eligible boyfriend as soon as possible, in order to leave home and start living independently.

So much has already been written about the brilliant updates invented by Bernie Su and his team, of the plotting and characterisation that caught on with so many watching the series, enabling Su and co. to found Pemberley Digital and commit to retelling classic stories full-time via new media. But the genius of transmedia is, I think, as much in the execution as in the content. Henry Jenkins’ definition of transmedia is as follows: 

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.

As another recently wrapped transmedia case study, The Autobiography of Jane Eyre is another independent adaptation from a small writing team that, for me, has the unique draw of modern Jane Eyre’s Tumblr. Jane is a live-in tutor at Mr Rochester’s large house in Canada, and her artistic talent in the original novel becomes photography for this adaptation. On Tumblr, she reblogs – in addition to her YouTube videos – her own photography (she is of course on Instagram) and others’ vintage images, fairy tale art and scenes, inspirational quotes and music. Jane’s blog is a mood board, art journal and scrapbook (all the postings reflect her feelings at various stages in the story), an insight into those feelings she cannot, due to her introverted nature, always expand on for viewers, especially regarding Rochester. Jane vlogs, on the whole, in a copycat style to Bernie Su’s Lizzie Bennet – facing a camera in her bedroom – but this adaptation is actually better when Jane breaks this habit, i.e. when recording an eerie confessional scene in broken tones on the floor of the infamous Red Room, or musing aloud and filming during a walk in the woods. The series as a transmedia effort is not perfect, and yet I might just find a diary from this Canadian Jane Eyre (who drinks fruit tea, reads widely and quotes Frank O’Hara) a compelling read. It struck me that this could work in reverse, too – publishers and authors creating an extension of character or world building online, marketing meeting content – and not necessarily on the grand scale of Pottermore, either.

Apart from looking out for transmedia series deserving novelisation, as happened to Bernie Su and Kate Rorick, it will be interesting to see how publishers begin to work with transmedia and consider world building beyond the book. The only case I can think of is Night Film by Marisha Pessl, a horror thriller (for adults) from Random House with scans of newspaper articles, police reports and images apparently pasted into the narrative, to back up Scott McGrath’s story with integrated pieces of realism (or a semblance of it). The story becomes darker, more morbid for these added details (I have, as yet, failed to finish it as it is fairly black). There is also an app that releases more content and information. But a sprawling world is created around a single book (not to exploit success established already), and I can think of nothing else in book publishing – yet – quite like it.

Many book trailers are created and posted via the YouTube channels of publishers, but I think transmedia fragments might render the content more interesting by enhancing it. The excitement is in the planning, as it is all still a relatively blank canvas.